Kizarvexis wrote:Theemile has a point in that the wedge is the main defense of a ship. So being able to attack while rolled is a big deal.

RD's allow you to roll ship. Keyhole is not required. Unless you wish to play the, "engineers in 2000K years are stupid" game and do not know how to relay information... something we have been doing since before WWII...

Theemile wrote:But the Keyhole IS defensive - it allows the ship to roll wedge while still controlling it's CMs and missiles - AND each Keyhole has it's own PDLCs and defensive buckler.

Let me highlight the definitive words. The PDLC/Buckler is frankly utter waste of mass as it is trying to put lipstick on the pig. The pig are the highlighted words.

The FTL bandwidth already exists in NUMEROUS small platforms which have to exist for CA's, CL's, DD's. Now on an SD? Keyhole makes sense as they fight in a "WALL" of battle and NOT individually. BC's work in ~divisions or smaller often. Squadrons of BC's is rare. SD's NEVER go anywhere other than in squadron strength. Most often in TASK force strength. Redundancy and distributed network in this case IS the keyhole as a greater mass efficiency is required to concentrate the FTL channels.

A NIKE BC on the other hand has only 84 CM tubes firing in the latest book back to 10s intervals instead of 8s which means with even the best Cm they have, they only have to control 6-->7 salvos instead of 11 as in AAC.

Now here is the next ***** IF you have an FTL component in your distributed network for CM manipulation targeting, then number of salvos you control simultaneously goes DOWN as the majority are just getting to 'x' destination for majority of their lifespan before getting new data. IF using lightspeed C&C, because you are time lagged, you must update MUCH more often as your data is so much older, timeliness of said data is imperative, but with FTL, all those intermediate updates are not required, or at least FAR fewer.

Relax wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:Theemile has a point in that the wedge is the main defense of a ship. So being able to attack while rolled is a big deal.

RD's allow you to roll ship. Keyhole is not required. Unless you wish to play the, "engineers in 2000K years are stupid" game and do not know how to relay information... something we have been doing since before WWII...

:facepalm:

The RDs get you the info. Keyhole 1 or 2 has the fire control links to control the missiles.

No, you don't want to put the fire control links on the RDs. Because then the RDs are transmitting to the missiles which would be much easier to detect than the directional back to the fleet info would. So the RDs making broad transmissions to the missiles would make them more likely to be picked up and destroyed. Nobody cares about the ship doing FC as you can see it already.

:facepalm:If they know EXACTLY where the RD's are it does not matter. Unless you wish to postulate that missiles can now track tiny fleet footed Stealthy RD's when they can't even find Ships... RD's who will be used just like Keyholes(Read AAC) and how they are used currently where each takes the task of only broadcasting part of the time so you cannot localize them which is canon in the books for multiple books.

EDIT: Then again, DW just placed a frickin GRASER of unknown power/duration on an RD in UH so..... what the Hell, why can't a PDLC be placed "free" on an RMN RD with its micro fusion plants which make capacitor fed RD's look like a model T Ford.

Last edited by Relax on Tue Jun 04, 2019 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Relax wrote::facepalm:If they know EXACTLY where the RD's are it does not matter. Unless you wish to postulate that missiles can now track tiny fleet footed Stealthy RD's when they can't even find Ships... RD's who will be used just like Keyholes(Read AAC) and how they are used currently where each takes the task of only broadcasting part of the time so you cannot localize them which is canon in the books for multiple books.

:facepalm:Just because the Solarian League can't detect them today, doesn't mean that they won't find a way to detect them tomorrow.

The Manties tech research prowess is because of culture and the wide ranging access to research via the Manticoran Junction. The SL may not have the culture that the Manties have, but they do have access to the research, just slower.

Relax wrote::facepalm:If they know EXACTLY where the RD's are it does not matter. Unless you wish to postulate that missiles can now track tiny fleet footed Stealthy RD's when they can't even find Ships... RD's who will be used just like Keyholes(Read AAC) and how they are used currently where each takes the task of only broadcasting part of the time so you cannot localize them which is canon in the books for multiple books.

:facepalm:Just because the Solarian League can't detect them today, doesn't mean that they won't find a way to detect them tomorrow.

The Manties tech research prowess is because of culture and the wide ranging access to research via the Manticoran Junction. The SL may not have the culture that the Manties have, but they do have access to the research, just slower.

It would not matter if they dropped their stealth 100%. Are you going to go after a tiny defensive multiple redundant system or the massive ship...

Kizarvexis wrote::facepalm:Just because the Solarian League can't detect them today, doesn't mean that they won't find a way to detect them tomorrow.

The Manties tech research prowess is because of culture and the wide ranging access to research via the Manticoran Junction. The SL may not have the culture that the Manties have, but they do have access to the research, just slower.

It would not matter if they dropped their stealth 100%. Are you going to go after a tiny defensive multiple redundant system or the massive ship...

Kizarvexis wrote:Just because the Solarian League can't detect them today, doesn't mean that they won't find a way to detect them tomorrow.

The Manties tech research prowess is because of culture and the wide ranging access to research via the Manticoran Junction. The SL may not have the culture that the Manties have, but they do have access to the research, just slower.

Relax wrote: It would not matter if they dropped their stealth 100%. Are you going to go after a tiny defensive multiple redundant system or the massive ship...

Kizarvexis wrote:Theemile has a point in that the wedge is the main defense of a ship. So being able to attack while rolled is a big deal.

RD's allow you to roll ship. Keyhole is not required. Unless you wish to play the, "engineers in 2000K years are stupid" game and do not know how to relay information... something we have been doing since before WWII...

Well there's relaying at all; and then relaying with sufficient bandwidth.

Recon drones can't even act as a single-channel Hermes buoy (or captains and fleet commanders would be using them to talk with people without FTL comms of their own - instead of having to deploy a Hermes buoy), while a Hermes buoy has like 10% the bandwidth of 1 Keyhole II. So trying to relay FTL fire control data - even just to CMs, probably needs more than just RDs hanging around outside the wedge.

Now you can obviously build something smaller and more redundant that a full up offensive capable Keyhole II you want to control less missiles per platform (and omit the onboard defenses of each platform) -- but I tend to doubt you can use RDs for that purpose. (There may also be minor problems of whether RDs have the correct radios to even talk to missiles; but that seems like something easier to fix than having a too low bandwidth FTL transceiver.

Kizarvexis wrote:Just because the Solarian League can't detect them today, doesn't mean that they won't find a way to detect them tomorrow.

The Manties tech research prowess is because of culture and the wide ranging access to research via the Manticoran Junction. The SL may not have the culture that the Manties have, but they do have access to the research, just slower.

Relax wrote: It would not matter if they dropped their stealth 100%. Are you going to go after a tiny defensive multiple redundant system or the massive ship...

Jonathan_S wrote:Well there's relaying at all; and then relaying with sufficient bandwidth.

Recon drones can't even act as a single-channel Hermes buoy

Hermes buoy, RD, and Keyholes are all transceivers with 'x' amount of FTL bandwidth. HOW you choose to divy up said bandwidth and use it is up to you. They all do the exact same thing.

Hauling around another dedicated FTL transceiver platform violates the KISS principle. Violates the simple fact that every single ship from DD to BC and SD wants this system and all have built in FTL transceivers themselves. Making a common system out of pre-existing available multi redundant platforms is just plain ol' common sense.